If you missed this front-page story in Sunday’s Sacramento Bee, give it a read. Reporter Peter Hecht shows how some industrious weed cultivators in Humboldt County, which he calls “America’s most renowned bastion of illicit marijuana growing,” are stepping up efforts to capitalize on that renown.
As Hecht frames it, the entrepreneurial members of the Humboldt Growers Association — along with supportive politicians like former county supervisor Bonnie Neely — don’t take kindly to the idea that we could get left behind while large-scale producers elsewhere drink our milkshake. But as we saw with Prop 19, some of the most fierce resistance may come from within their own community.
One minor clarification to the story: Hecht says District Attorney Paul Gallegos was “the only prosecutor in California to publicly endorse Prop 19,” which wasn’t exactly the case. (Okay, maybe “clarification” isn’t quite the word.)
This article appears in A Cannabis Carol.
One wouldn’t say there’s any one or another type of person within “the alcohol community”…or “the coffee community”…or “the jeans wearing community” but there are specific people in specific business and political communities, which is what the blog and article is talking about. It just so happens to be that marijuana is being placed on the podium as the common commodity for these true self-made and self-serving communities to fight over.
Please don’t confuse the idea of community…those people aren’t speaking for everybody, but like with everything business, want us to believe they are. The real marijuana community isn’t Prop. 19 or humboldt cannabiz, but people anywhere who just want to smoke and grow weed without hassle…or buy and sell it, as the case is and has always been for most people.
“..The real marijuana community isn’t Prop. 19 or humboldt cannabiz, but people anywhere who just want to smoke and grow weed without hassle…or buy and sell it, as the case is and has always been for most people.”
Well said!
These are people who want to continue to live an illegal lifestyle without consequences – consequences that anyone else would – will – DO – pay. They want the Humboldt status quo which is essentially unfair and unequal treatment under the law.
Just try not paying your income taxes and see what happens to you.
Legalize it and let the chips fall where they may – but it is long past time that these people started paying for business licenses, employee withholding, insurance for their employees, as well as all applicable business fees, income taxes and the like. Time they started living under the same ever-increasingly-restrictive business regulations they have championed against others.
We have been beat up about how it should be legal since the 70s, and in this last election where it was about to happen – they reneged on the deal.
It’s time to stop lauding this industry. It’s time to legalize it. It’s time to stop wasting public monies on incarcerating smokers, and it is time to relegate the growers to AG land and get the criminals out of out neighborhoods. Get it over with.